Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Officials at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory have taken down their Web site to analyze their computer systems after a cyber attack.

Helen Worth, a spokeswoman for the Laurel-based lab that works closely with the military and NASA on research projects, said Tuesday that "penetration from an unwanted source" was discovered over the weekend.

Worth says the attack may have started about two weeks ago, but it's too soon to know who carried it out.

She says attackers accessed nonclassified information on the external Web site but did not gain access to classified information or the facility's internal network. Part of the internal review will be determining what information was accessed.